Booing-- A Guest Post By Paul Lukasiak

-by Paul Lukasiak

The people who are complaining about NFL players taking a knee during The Star Spangled Banner don't give a damn about respect for the anthem, or the flag, or veterans. If they did, they'd be livid about a far greater demonstration of contempt for those symbols-- the booing engaged in by those who oppose the protesting NFL players.

An NFL player who takes a knee during the anthem is engaging in the least intrusive form of protest possible... those who disapprove of his actions can simply look away, and focus their attention where they themselves would say the attention really belongs-- on the flag that is being displayed, and/or the person singing the anthem. No one is forcing anyone to deal with the players' protests at all-- yet these players are roundly condemned by so-called “patriots” for “disrespecting the flag.”

Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of fans are loudly booing during the anthem to protest the players who take a knee, and not only do these same “partriots” not criticize the fans, they often praise those who boo. But what could be more disrespectful to the flag and the anthem than to protest in a way that is simply unavoidable?

While the players are in no way interfering in the ceremony, booing is a direct assault on the anthem. You can look away from the players, but you can't “hear away” from someone booing while you are trying to listen to the anthem. The booing is inescapable-- and the only way to avoid hearing it is to avoid hearing the anthem as well.

But I've yet to see one single “patriot” who is the least bit disturbed by the booing-- let alone be mortified by this egregiously assaultive display of disrespect toward “the anthem, the flag, the troops, and our veterans.” The only thing these “patriots” have a problem with is black men getting attention while protesting the pervasive racism of the criminal justice system in this country. Its an offense to ask white sports fans to take a moment to consider a reality that black people live with all day, everyday.

As for the anthem, it was written in 1814 by Franc1s Scott Key. In 1814, well over 80% of the black people living in the United States were slaves. Thus, when Key wrote the words “O'er the land of the free,” he was clearly relegating black people to the status of non-persons.

This is unsurprising, given that Key was the son of a wealthy slave owner and owned slaves himself. Key was also adamantly opposed to abolitionism and used his power as US Attorney for Washington DC to suppress the abolitionist movement.

But despite this history, white “patriots” demand that black athletes treat Key's song as sacrosanct,and act as if the atrocities done to their ancestors in the name of the flag never happened.

 

Jimi Hendrix: Remembrances

I was in college in the mid and late 1960s. College for me was mostly about getting high-- on drugs, liberation politics and music. As chairman of Stony Brook's Student Activities Board, I got to do all three. I invited Timothy Leary to come give a lecture, and he gave me some very pure LSD when I picked him up at the airport. I used it for my first acid trip. Recently I wrote about the experience of having Julian Bond and Strom Thurmond come out to the school as part of the same lecture series. 

As for music... I've written about it many times here at DWT over the years. I was lucky enough to book concerts by The Doors, The Who, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Byrds, The Temptations, Ravi Shankar, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne and Jimi Hendrix. Each one is a story in itself.

I'm not sure if I've ever told my favorite Jimi Hendrix story. Today is the anniversary of his death, in 1970, so I'm going to give it a shot, beyond what I included in a give-away for a Jimi platinum award of behalf of Alan Grayson last year.

I met Jimi Hendrix in 1967, before he went off to England and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I watched him-- he was Jimmy James then-- play guitar at a John Hammond Jr. show at a tiny NYC club, the Cafe Au Go Go. And yes, he played guitar with his teeth. I asked him to come play at my college. He said he was leaving the next day for England, and introduced me to Chas Chandler of The Animals, who had come to watch the show, and said that he'd play my school when he got back.

The following March he was back-- on his first U.S. tour as the Jimi Hendrix Experience-- and he remembered and played at Stony Brook, one of his first shows. Later I spent some time with him in a relatively remote part of Morocco near Essaouira, and then saw him-- or thought I did-- for the last time at the Isle of Wight Festival. Ironically, much later, after he died so young (age 27) and so tragically, I became president of his record label, Reprise Records.

So that's the short version. It's late Friday night; ready for the details?

The first time I met Jimi wasn't that night, just as school was starting up again, when he and his band, the Night Hawks (aka the Screaming Night Hawkes, and also the Blue Flames), were backing John Hammond at the Cafe Au Go Go on Bleecker Street, where I was kind of interning for Howard Solomon, the owner.

Just a month or two earlier I was kicking around Manhattan in the afternoon, probably waiting to pick up some marijuana in the evening and take it back to campus, when I decided to go pay a visit to another music biz entrepreneur pal, Brad Pierce, who had recently opened a new club in the basement of One Sheridan Square, The Salvation. (I knew him because I went to every night of a residency he put on a year earlier for the then-unknown Doors-- in New York recording their debut album-- at a club he ran called Ondine, on East 59th Street, under the 59th Street Bridge.)

I walked into Brad's office, and we were chatting when in comes a depressed Jimmy James, very down in the dumps. Brad introduced us. Jimi was broke and needed money. I had the impression it was for drugs, but that was just an impression. He left his guitar with Brad for collateral, and Brad gave him some cash. Later Jimi and I got plastered on some pot and hash I had, and he was really grateful, and a lot more expressive than I ever found later. Soon after, he played at The Salvation-- a few days before he played at the Cafe Au Go Go.

Jimmy left for England with The Animals a day or two after the Hammond gigs, and I didn't necessarily expect to ever see him again. But he remembered the promise to come play at Stony Brook, and he did-- on March 9, 1968. He wasn't well-known yet, and most students were too square to understand the opportunity they were getting, but the gym filled up with the students who did understand, and with people from all over Long Island and as far away as NYC. (Students free, non-students $5 or $10.)

Before the show Hendrix seemed taciturn and brooding, definitely not chatty or especially friendly or outgoing. He was very much in his head the whole night. He kept to himself backstage, not even with his bandmates or crew. But after the show he came along to my house off-campus for a party. I was busy hosting the party and hooking up with my new girlfriend, and didn't spend much time with him.

I went to my room around midnight. I got up a few hours later-- maybe around 3-- to check if the party was still going on and if the house was still there. I opened the door and peered down the hall, and there was Hendrix chatting away amicably and passing a joint back and forth with... my mother, who had driven out to Long Island from Brooklyn to see the show. I know for sure that I didn't dream this. I had never seen her smoke a doobie before in public, just with her girlfriends when they played mahjong. But there she was, toking with Jimi Hendrix! God knows what they could have been talking about!

I went back to bed.

The next time I saw Jimi was almost exactly a year later. He was already pretty famous by then, a star. I was in Morocco with my girlfriend Martha, and we ran into him in Essaouira. He was living down the road at the Hotel des Iles, the fancy place where years later I stayed in a dozen times, but on this trip Martha and I were staying in my VW van. There were rumors that Jimi was actually in a small town, Diabat, nearly adjacent to Essaouira, but it wasn't true. We met him in the Essaouira marketplace, and he told me they were selling homemade yogurt that was amazing. I had never tasted yogurt and had some on his suggestion. I've loved it ever since-- the homemade variety, that is.

There were some hippies who died-- maybe were shot?-- in Diabat as we were getting ready to head north, and people said they were part of Jimi's party. But I don't think he had ever even been there, and I know he wasn't hanging out with a colony of European hippies. The police went in and either arrested or chased away all the hippies, but by then Martha and I were driving toward Tangier and Jimi was flying back to Paris.

I never saw him again, although as I alluded to earlier, I've been sure for years that I saw him at the Isle of Wight Festival a few weeks later. I know I was there, and I saw Bob Dylan and The Who and some singers I knew from New York, Richie Havens and Tom Paxton, but Jimi-- who had played Woodstock two weeks earlier, on August 18-- didn't play the Isle of Wight until 1970, when I was already living in India. So maybe I saw him in the VIP area, where I ran into a bunch of Stones, Eric Clapton and Syd Barrett and saw some Beatles walking around. However, there's no record of him having been there, so maybe not.

Jimi played the Isle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1970, and then went to London. He overdosed on barbiturates (sleeping pills) in an apartment at the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill on September 18. Luckily, his music is very much still alive, vibrantly so.

Jimi Hendrix Contest Extended In Honor Of Memorial Day

You're probably aware that we're getting into the final stretch of our Alan Grayson Jimi Hendrix fundraiser. Because of the Memorial Day holiday, we've extended it until Tuesday-- one extra day. You can get in on it here-- and possibly win the rare, collectible Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced? platinum record award.

Do you remember the Blue America-endorsed candidate in Illinois, George Gollin, a particle physicist? Unfortunately, he didn't win his primary against Steve Israel's heavily-funded mystery meat candidate, Ann Callis, who has virtually no chance whatsoever of unseating weak Republican Rodney Davis in IL-13. George, however, hasn't withdrawn form politics. He's still working to make the progressive movement stronger and this is the introduction he wrote urging his supporters to contribute to Grayson's campaign this week:

Howie Klein is a progressive political blogger who writes the DownWithTyranny.blogspot.com blog. He is also helps with BlueAmerica, which raises funds for progressive candidates. Howie passed to me a message asking for help in support of Alan Grayson, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represents a district in central Florida.

I met Mr. Grayson for the first time a few weeks ago in Washington. Grayson is  smart, progressive, quick, and fearless. He has advanced degrees. And he not only speaks truth to power, but willingly mocks the king who comes into the room unclad. I was not surprised that he was kept off the Democratic side of the House panel that will watch the Right make political hay from the deaths in Benghazi.

One of Grayson’s gigs is serving on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. One of the many reasons we need to help him stay in office is to protect us from the Republican crazies on SS&T. Recall that this is the committee which features Paul Broun (R-GA-10) as a subcommittee chair; Broun is the guy who declared that "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." And before he lost his seat in 2012, Todd Akin (R-MO-02) was also a Republican member of the committee. He’s the yahoo who explained that women who have been raped will not become pregnant because "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

So I encourage you to read Howie’s appeal below, and contribute to Alan Grayson’s campaign fund.

We need better people in office than the Democratic organization will tend to support; most recently, they’ve backed one guy with a fake college degree who isn’t even a Democrat and others who appear to have been laundering campaign contributions from their parents to increase their  cash intake.

I don’t plan to send you very many messages of this sort, and thank you for your indulgence, and your consideration.

best regards,
George Gollin
Champaign, IL
IL13

You can read all about the "contest rules" and contribute to Grayson's campaign here. Any amount goes, even one dollar. And if you don't have any cash on hand at the moment and want a chance to win anyway, just send us a post card to Blue America, PO Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you'll have the same chance as anyone else.


Writing to his supporters today, Grayson decided to put the Hendrix context into some context, "so you recognize," he wrote, "just how mind-boggling this opportunity is."

Are You Experienced? was Jimi Hendrix’s first album. Rolling Stone ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time.

In the year that Are You Experienced? was released, the readers of Melody Maker voted Jimi Hendrix the Pop Musician of the Year. The following year, Billboard named him Artist of the Year, and Rolling Stone called him Performer of the Year.

Rolling Stone called Are You Experienced? "epochal," and rated it the 15th greatest album of all time, as well as the third greatest debut album of all time. Rolling Stone also ranked "Purple Haze," the lead song on the album, as the 17th greatest song of all time.

Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World, called it "the album that shook the world." He added that it is "the measure by which everything in rock and roll has been compared since."

The album was distributed by Polydor Records. When the head of Polydor first heard the album, he said, "This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard."

The album contained several innovative effects, like "amp howl" guitar feedback and backward guitar and drum music. It was so unprecedented that when the recording studio master tapes were sent to Reprise Records for remastering, they wrote on the box "Deliberate distortion. Do not correct."

Are You Experienced? reached the Billboard Top 40-- for 27 weeks.

The Library of Congress chose Are You Experienced? as one of only fifty recordings to be added to the National Recording Registry. The archivist of the Smithsonian Institution called it "a landmark recording," because "it altered the syntax of the music," he explained, "in a way I compare to James Joyce’s Ulysses."

At the insistence of one Paul McCartney, Hendrix was invited to play songs from Are You Experienced? at the Monterey Pop Festival. Hendrix closed the set by smashing his guitar, and setting it on fire.

I haven’t done that on the Floor of the House. Yet.

So how special is the RIAA-certified Platinum Album Award for Are You Experienced? Very special. Very, very special.

And thanks to Blue America PAC, if you contribute to our campaign this week, you have a chance to own a special piece of music history and legend, by winning the Jimi Hendrix Platinum Album Award. It’s your chance for Musical Paradise.

Jimi Hendrix released only seven albums in the United States. Six of them went platinum, selling over a million copies. If you have a way to get the RIAA-certified Platinum Album Award for one of those other five albums, go for it. And if you already happen to have one of those other Jimi Hendrix Platinum Album Awards, then by all means, please disregard this offer. But if not, then contributing to our campaign today is the only chance that you’re ever going to have to get one.

Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t blow it.

Plus, we could use your help. Thanks.

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

Unlike Jimi Hendrix, Alan Grayson Can't Play Guitar With His Teeth

We never asked Alan Grayson how he feels about a Hillary Clinton presidency-- although he's getting a lot of pressure to run in the primary against her. But we do know how the Republican Party feels about her perspective run: they are terrified. They know she can beat any of their horribly flawed candidates-- think Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee-- in a landslide the scope of which is likely to jeopardize the political careers of dozens of senators, congressmembers and local Republican officials. For that reason-- and for that reason alone-- they stopped their caterwauling about repealing Obamacare and formed the Select Committee on Benghazi.

Many Democrats reacted by suggesting that Nancy Pelosi not legitimize the witch hunt by appointing any Democrats to it. Other equally sincere Democrats insisted that it is necessary to respond to scurrilous, partisan Republican smears with facts. Blue America came up with the solution that has since been widely adopted by the progressive movement: appoint just one Democrat to the committee-- Alan Grayson. Literally, within 60 seconds of a tweet to that effect, Grayson approved the idea. He's a lot faster on the uptake than your garden variety Democratic congressman.

In the end, its questionable if a stick-in-the-mud like Steny Hoyer would ever allow Pelosi to follow the Grayson-only strategy. Friday Grayson was on MSNBC vowing that if she does, he will be the Republicans worst and final Benghazi nightmare.

There is no other member of the House like Alan Grayson. Blue America works hard to try to change that by helping elect other members as brilliant, as fearless, as values-focused, as principled and as strategic as Grayson. But they don't grow on trees.

After Grayson was gratuitously attacked by Beltway corporate shill Cokie Roberts, he said, "Cokie Roberts's attack against me is designed to discredit not only me, but also to discredit the concerns of ordinary Americans-- like you-- in order to protect the Washington elite: corporate lobbyists, corrupt insiders, millionaires and billionaires, multinational corporations, big banks, the Halliburtons and Exxon Mobils of the world, and other economic aristocrats who would benefit from these 'free trade' giveaways. In short, the people who think that they own us. The D.C. Establishment doesn't know what to do about me, because I am unbossed and unbought. Lobbyists don't like me, because I stand against their 'free trade' giveaways, their bailouts, their no-bid contracts and their tax breaks. Billionaires fund my opponents' campaigns. Not mine."

I met Jimi Hendrix in 1967, before he went off to England and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Musical talents like Jimi don't grow on trees either. I watched him-- he was Jimmy James then-- play guitar at a John Hammond, Jr. show at a tiny NYC club, the Cafe Au Go Go. I asked him to come play at my college. He said he was leaving the next day for England but that he'd play my school when he got back. The following March he was back-- on his first U.S. tour as the Jimi Hendrix Experience-- and he remembered and played at Stony Brook, one of his first shows. Later I spent some time with him in Morocco and then saw him for the last time at the Isle of Wight Festival. Ironically, much later, after he had died so young and so tragically, I became president of his record label, Reprise.

Over my years at Reprise, I was given hundreds of gold and platinum record awards when our releases reached sales plateaus. There was never one I was more thrilled to have gotten than a platinum award (one million sales) for Jimi's debut LP, Are You Experienced?

Grayson's "Republican Health Care Plan" speech on the floor of the House was his Are You Experienced? moment. That's why it was a natural instinct to offer to give that rare, collectible platinum award-- RIAA-certified, of course-- to an Alan Grayson contributor. That's our Blue America "contest" this week. Just contribute-- any amount-- to Alan Grayson's reelection campaign on this page and you may be the lucky, randomly selected donor who gets the Jimi Hendrix plaque as a thank you gift from Blue America. (In fact, if you want to plaque but can't afford even a $5 contribution at this moment, send a post card to Blue America at PO Box 27201, Los Angeles 90027 and let us know you want the award too.)

McCAIN AND HILLARY WANT TO FOOL YOU WITH A FAKE GAS TAX HOLIDAY

We can dedicate these to the McCain campaign ploy all over the country

This morning I was inundated with e-mails about some kind of cockamamie Jimi Hendrix porn tape story in the NY Times. Even my baby sister called me and said, "I read about you in the Times today." No, no, no... It's some other Howie Klein in L.A. It isn't me. Yes, I had a quasi-friendship with Hendrix in the late 60s but not close enough for this kind of thing. And, sure, I've had my share of vices; but porn was never one of them. The other notable occurrence in my world this morning, before running off to the airport, was watching Bush' execrable and venal speech on the economy. It made me sick just seeing him still-- even with his approval ratings headed towards single digits-- just lying his ass off.... and with the same old lies that no one believes anymore. Except McCain. McCain either believes or is making believe he believes. But even Bush couldn't go along with McCain taking the Bush Economic Miracle to it's logical conclusion.

I tried coming up with a coherent post about it before catching my plane. I love the art work Lucas did based The Blind Leading the Blind but few minutes ago I found Krugman's column, Gas Tax Follies (same edition as the Hendrix case of mistaken identity). I respect Krugman a lot and I've been disturbed over the course of the last few months as he leaned heavily in the Hillary direction. What, I thought, could make him so blind? It looks like her signing on to a version of McCain's cynical summer gas holiday ploy has finally opened his eyes (a little tiny bit). He terms McCain proposal "a really bad idea" and notes that "Hillary Clinton is emulating him (but with a twist that makes her plan pointless rather than evil), and Barack Obama, to his credit, says no."

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

I happen to agree with Hillary on the excess profits tax. She's right and Krugman's wrong but Hillary, Krugman and everyone in Washington knows that that proposal will get through Congress and be signed by Bush on the same day that Bush has Cheney arrested for treason and sent to Guantanamo for enhanced questioning. Hillary is being deceptive and treating the voters like fools to even bring it up in the context of a summer gas price reduction. It's a cheap Inside the Beltway trick that shows that she and McCain are just opposite sides of the same worthless coin. In case you missed it last time: